I hate to be negative all the time, but it's two weeks since my last post and the only thing that has changed in my house is that the carpenter put the steps and part of the railing in. We haven't seen him since last Wednesday -- or anyone else for that matter -- except the painters came sometime yesterday and got their ladders, which they had left here thinking that they would be painting the inside in just a day or two. I feel frustrated and murderous and depressed, all at the same time.



All my furniture is in, but I've had to tell the stores that we're not ready. The sofas and dining room chairs were custom made, which is not a short process, and still they beat the builder. The Professor installed the gas cooktop the other day. He is as sick of waiting around as I am. Now if I could get him to install the ovens so I could bake. I would adapt a lot better to this if I could just get started on my Christmas cookies.



The night before Thanksgiving I went to my DIL's and cooked those few things that I could do without the recipe. On Thanksgiving morning I opened up the paper and was stunned to see all the sale ads. My first thought was, What are these doing here in the morning? -- they don't come until late afternoon. That thought was immediately replaced by the realization that the sales ads have always been in the morning paper, but this was the first time in I-don't-know-how-many-years that I was able to actually open the newspaper in the morning.

The day after Thanksgiving we took the Professor's daughter & family out to lunch. Her sons, A & B, are very smart, especially A who seems to have a brain that functions just like the Professor's. He told me he wants to major in physics in college (Prof has a PhD in physics). What part of physics? I asked. Theoretical. What area? The big questions, like how the world began and how it will end. Like Einstein? Yes, exactly like Einstein. So you aren't going to do research on why electrons can't stop on a dime, but have to skid... No, I am not interested in the details at all. Just don't tell your grandfather that! (The Professor devoted a good part of his career to figuring out strange things about electrons.)

I found the conversation rather amusing, but I also remember being 17 and the innocence-arrogance-idealism combination that convinces them they can solve the world's problems without ever having to dirty their hands with those pedestrian details. Once again I find myself thinking that I have finally figured things out -- what I want to do, the kind of person I want to be, what's really important. Now I'm ready to go back to age, oh maybe 11 or 12, and do it all again the right way!